Len Hend
I was born in Sydney, August 1943
(many photos of all my family and adventures are on other pages)
Leonard Hend is my full name, but most people call me Lenny Hend. As a small child, my family and I lived in Maroubra for a few years before moving to Parramatta, where I attended Arthur Phillip Primary School and Macquarie Boys High. I finished school halfway through fourth year. My mother, who was of English descent, was an artist and a professional dancer. Her stepfather, Jack Ricketts, was an English-born scenic artist for live theatres. My father was a bushman, a boxer, a fencing contractor, and later a dancer. His parents were of Chinese and Scottish descent, with an unknown entity on both sides of his family, possibly Aboriginal. Painting, dancing, bush craft, and boxing were part of my upbringing. In 1963, I bought a small farm at Londonderry on the outskirts of Sydney, where I built a racehorse training complex. Meanwhile, I worked as a fencing contractor in the early mornings and a detail drafts man during the day. My detailed drafting job involved designing and drawing hydraulic components for power stations and other large engineering projects. The work required accurate and unambiguous instructions for the manufacturing of the components. This work helped me develop my ability to give clear instructions when teaching painting. I worked for McNamee Industries, Hope Street, Ermington, NSW.
In 1976, I opened an artist supply business in Penrith, west of Sydney, and began teaching and refining my painting techniques. In 1979, I started writing a how-to-paint book, which was soon converted to video. Those first six lessons are still available today in the updated and new 70-video collection. Not enjoying city life, I dropped out, bought a property at Mullumbimby, Northern NSW, and toured Australia for the next 20 years while living in a converted school bus. Thousands of pictures were painted by me while demonstrating my techniques and selling tutorial videos. Being allergic to perfume, I shied away from galleries and art institutions, preferring to please the general public with my colourful landscapes and deft manipulation of the brush. While mostly painting in oils or acrylics, I often resorted to using house paint on murals that were up to one hundred feet long. I have now retired and spend my days at Mullumbimby or in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I now have the time for filming and refining my new series of tutorial videos. I have four sons and a daughter.
The images of me fat and having surgery are from a brain tumour, successful surgery was in early 2021.
